Throughout history, across the world, women have not had the same political or civil rights as men; as a result of this inequality, women have had little representation in the literary world. Ancient Greece, specifically ancient Athens, exists as one of the few literary exceptions to the centuries long, worldwide disregard of women. Realistically, women in ancient Athens led limited lives bound by the often-cruel dictates of a male dominated society. These ancient Athenian women were not citizens, they had no political power, and they were property of their husbands. The only powers ancient Athenian women had came in the form of determining inheritance through burial rites, and their ability to influence men through their physical sensuality. The exploration of women's loss of their power over burial rights and their use of their physical attractiveness to influence men in Sophocles' Antigone and Aristophanes' Lysistrata illustrates to the reader the same idea concerning the essence of the ideal woman in Athenian society.

The different portrayals of female characters in Antigone and Lysistrata illustrate

The word "lysistrata" translates into English as "disbander of the army," in Aristophanes' comedy the character Lysistrata characterizes the epitome of the ideal Athenian woman because her role in relation to her society is that of the peacemaker (Lysistrata, note vi). Lysistrata masterminds the plot that saves Athens from the disaster of continuous war. Lysistrata unweaves the tangled web of her war torn city-state.

When we are winding thread, and it is tangled, we pass the spool across and through the skein, now this way, now that way; even so, to finish off the War, we shall send embassies hither and thither and everywhere, to disentangle matters. (Lysistrata, 26).

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Approximate Word count = 2083
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)